


A Sense of Loss

by TheMalhamBird



Series: MalhamBird's Cabinet of Curiosities (fic of 500 words or less) [4]
Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23430520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMalhamBird/pseuds/TheMalhamBird
Summary: The King is dying, has died, and Aumerle can feel it.
Relationships: Edward 2nd Duke of York | Duke of Aumerle & Richard II of England
Series: MalhamBird's Cabinet of Curiosities (fic of 500 words or less) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685425
Kudos: 3





	A Sense of Loss

**Author's Note:**

> I am starting to transfer the fics and snippets from my Tumblr account across to Ao3 so that they’re findable. The fic below is one of them and may have been written at any point between 01/04/2020 and sometime during 2018…

He’s dying.  
He doesn’t …mind. Not really. He knew it was coming. They told him about Kent, and Salisbury, and the others, and he knew. The King would have no choice.  
It’s what he would have done.  
And prison has been so terribly dull, it will be a relief to escape it. Truly. He’s made his peace with Death- he made it long ago, when Anne…he’d never been able to see himself having a particularly long future without her, after all. Perhaps, before Bolingbroke, a glimmer of light had been growing…Aumerle. Isabelle. It will be better for her, he thinks, to be a widow. Not a wife forever divided from her husband and yet still bound to him. She deserves a chance at life, at a family. And as for Aumerle…  
Sweet, tender hearted Aumerle. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine his cousin is with him, holding him gently and whispering soft words to help ease this passing. He’s made his peace with Death, but he can’t help wishing it was just a little faster. That it wasn’t so cold. Or dark. That he wasn’t lying on a stone floor, staring up into nothing, too weak to move or even to call out through cracked and bleeding lips and plead with his jailers for mercy. He’s made his peace with death, but he doesn’t want to die here, and if he must-  
Don’t let him die here alone and forgotten.  
Please…

Over a hundred miles away, The Earl of Rutland wakes suddenly, Richard’s name on his lips and a sickening hollowness in his heart.  
When his father comes to his room that evening rendered mute by regret and grief and helplessness, it does not matter.   
Edward falls to his knees with an anguished cry and weeps, for the King lives and Richard-  
Richard is dead.


End file.
